The San Francisco 49ers selected quarterback Trey Lance with the third overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. Head coach Kyle Shanahan went to war with his own scouts over the move, but in the end it was a decision that left little to ambiguity.
Plain and simple: the Jimmy Garoppolo Era is coming to an end in the Bay.
This past week Garoppolo was pressed by the media on whether there is any awkwardness between him and Lance given that the young North Dakota State star was brought in to be his replacement.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about awkwardness,” Garoppolo said, per Charean Williams of ProFootballTalk. “It’s me and Trey. We’ve had a good relationship. We really have. It’s sort of one of those things. It is what it is. This business is weird, but you know, at the end of the day, we’re in that locker room; we’re around each other so much that, you know, it’s just business.”
Beyond that, Garoppolo envisions the pair’s relationship growing and progressing further in a very natural way.
Alex Caruso stays winning. https://t.co/RPDs7KeKXN
— Game 7 (@game7__) August 2, 2021
“The relationship between me and Trey, I think will just happen naturally,” Garoppolo added, per Nick Wagoner of ESPN. “It’s not something that you want to force too much. You don’t want to make it fake. It’s just things will happen and that stuff takes time. But I think it’s just one of those situations where you don’t want to go out of your normalcy and do something that’s not you. So, I just let things happen and take it from there.”
All in all, Garoppolo seems to be handling the situation about as well as anyone could.
Big picture, the 49ers have made it pretty clear that there is only one player they’re willing to trade Garoppolo for. Short of that happening, it’s hard to see a scenario where the 29-year-old ends up as anything other than Lance’s backup come season’s end.
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A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
